life imitates art

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Financial Post                              September 11, 2000

At the UN, life imitates art

        By Murray Dobbin

The poor old UN. Just as it holds its Millennial Summit, a
mass market action movie, The Art of War, mixes it up with
that other international organization, the WTO. In a wildly
zigzagging plot, the formerly august body is portrayed as so
weak and ineffectual that it has to create a covert action
branch (a.k.a. Wesley Snipes) to accomplish what it can't do
through the strength of its leadership. The task at hand?
Ensure that a UN-sponsored trade deal with China goes
ahead despite the efforts of various stereotypical bad guys,
snakeheads, triads, a Chinese sweat shop billionaire and
right-wing American patriots.

Those who miss the point in all the gratuitous blood and
gore need only visit the film's Web site
(www.artofwarmovie.com), where free-trade promotion is
explicit. Click on "international affairs" and you can link to a
glowing description of the U.S.-China trade deal that could
only have been written by a trade bureaucrat. Warner
Brothers liked the pro-free trade message so much it booked
it into 2,600 theatres, unheard of for a low-budget movie.

Donald Sutherland plays the (Canadian) Secretary General
of the UN. The SG is ethically challenged, morally
exhausted and incapable of giving strong direction on
anything. According to script writer Simon Barry, he
developed the theme because it had to be "believable as a
movie." Apparently, believing that the UN is useless and
corrupt is an easy sell to today's mass audience.

Indeed, the United Nations, which its founders hoped would
evolve into a form of democratic world governance, is now
less and less likely to achieve that role. It has been
deliberately weakened by the U.S. refusal to pay its dues,
creating an atmosphere of permanent crisis and growing
public skepticism.

And just as starving medicare of funds opens the door to
corporatized health care, the enemies of the UN have made
things so bad that corporations can now claim to be riding to
the rescue. As a result, the UN has embarked down a path
where such corporate Goliaths will have virtually equal
status with nation states. The UN's new Global Compact is a
"partnership" with some 50 transnationals, including some of
the world's most notorious corporate pariahs.

The absurdity of the film portrayal of the UN actually pales in
the face of current UN reality. In the movie, the UN has
sanctioned a hired killer to dispense with whomever he
thinks has to die. Not exactly a testimony to human rights,
democracy and rule of law.

But while supporters of the UN would cringe at its movie
portrayal, permitting the likes of Rio Tinto to be called a
"partner" of the UN is a staggering failure of moral
leadership. Rio Tinto has been publicly accused of so many
environmental, human rights and development offences that
it has attracted its very own global network of unions,
churches, indigenous peoples, communities and human
rights activists to fight it.

Compared with allowing Rio Tinto, Nike and Shell the right
to use the UN logo, the moral outrages in The Art of War
look tame. Nike has opposed with all its might the Workers
Rights Consortium (WRC), the only independent monitoring
program endorsed by human rights groups. It uses its
massive economic clout to punish any institution that raises
concerns about its behaviour -- withdrawing millions of
dollars in support from the University of Oregon, the
University of Michigan and Brown University when they
joined the WRC.

The number of victims of military violence against the Ogoni
people in Nigeria, in which Shell has been widely accused of
complicity, puts Wesley Snipes' count to shame. At least the
people Snipes killed had guns too, and could shoot back.

These are just some of the corporations that get to wrap
themselves in the flag of the UN, use its logo alongside their
own and, for minor contributions to UN programs, signal to
the world that they are associated with the lofty goals of the
United Nations. All the while ruthlessly pursuing economic
globalization that is impoverishing millions and utterly
contradicts everything the UN stands for.

It's not as if these corporate giants don't already have their
own global institution. The World Trade Organization is
evolving rapidly into a global corporate government, with a
secretariat, a legislative branch and legally binding
enforcement measures that can bring governments to their
knees. It has powers exceeding anything the UN has ever
dreamed of, effectively vetting the public policy of 140
nations to ensure they don't violate the rights of
corporations.

The Art of War takes its title from a text written in 500 B.C.
by Chinese General Sun Tzu, who said: "All war is based on
deception." In the movie, Donald Sutherland's character
deceives the world by sanctioning covert action. In the real
world, Kofi Annan's deceit is allowing the corporate
propaganda war to subvert the UN.

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx